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:: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 ::

Help (I need somebody, not just anybody)

It certainly brings pleasure to play a part in assisting someone. However, is this what drives people to want to help? In which case, you could be forcing help onto people who neither want nor need it. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell whether someone wants your help or not. Assuming they don't even ask, how do you tell when someone genuinely wants your help? After all, even people who secretly want help may deny the helping hand when pride stands in the way. How do you tell them from the people who resolutely do not want your help at all? Why do people reject help at all?

There was a tale once; of a world where doing someone a favour meant that they would like you. The more you helped others, the more they would like you. This, fortunately, is not a world we live in, though it very well may be that many people came from this world.

It's true - when someone does you a good turn, you begin to feel kindly towards this person. Do enough nice things for someone, and they start to like you. It is what I feel is perfectly normal and adaptive behavior. After all, when you like someone, are you not, in turn, nice to the person? Furthermore, being nice to this person ensures that he/she will continue to be nice to you - which is the process of survival; it is healthy social interaction. Biting the hand that feeds you? Not a smart move.

However, while some appreciate such gestures, it annoys others because they feel that with a favour comes indebtedness. There are those who hate to feel beholden to another through favours. To them, a favour must be returned in equal value. It is also something that is not always loved. Much like a present - not all presents are appreciated even when the intention is good. I'm sure we've all received presents we did not particularly want. Likewise, help is not always wanted, though need may be great. When such help is given, the gift is never fully used - it is resented - and in which case, what good is giving help that will not benefit?

Insomuch that whether someone wants our help or not is important, we must also consider need. People do not always need help, though they may beg for it. Whether or not asked for, it is counter-productive to give unnecessary help. Why? It fosters an impression that you believe your beneficiary to be incapable of doing anything himself and may condition him to depend on your input. Before you know it, you’ve constructed a system of dependence that collapses once you cannot be there to support it. Ironically, brutal indifference may prove more beneficial than actual assistance.

And then, there's the attitude of giving - favours should be given with a willing heart, without expectation of return. No one will appreciate a favour thrown at them arrogantly; help that is given with expectation of thanks and gratitude. It suggests that you are somehow superior in some aspect and thus well suited to dispense this “help”. Without a heart genuinely interested in improving someone’s life, helping others just becomes an exercise in the promotion of your self-worth, where one craves and demands recognition for one’s acts of kindness. Once this recognition is gone, the desire to help disappears too.

Help given when needed is admirable, but when it is also wanted and given purely altruistically, this gift is truly beautiful.

Labels: Philosophy

:: And that's all she wrote 3:30 PM [+] ::
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